Thingyfy is back with another Kickstarter campaign, and this time they're trying to fund the Pinhole Pro S-Series lenses. As with the original Pinhole Pro campaign launched this past summer, the new Pinhole Pro S seeks funding for a modern pinhole lens. Unlike the original, however, the latest campaign is for a model that Thingyfy calls the widest pro-tier pinhole lens in the world.

Pinhole Pro S comes in two varieties: the Pinhole Pro S11, an 11mm lens with a 120 degree FOV, and the Pinhole Pro S37, a 37mm lens with a 60 degree FOV. Both lenses feature a fully aluminum body. The S11 version is designed for mirrorless cameras with Micro Four Thirds, Sony E, and Fuji X mounts; the S37 is designed for SLR/DSLR cameras with Sony A, Nikon F, Canon EF, and Pentax K mounts.

The wide-angle S-Series weighs less while being wider and nine times sharper than the original Pinhole Pro lens, according to Thingyfy. The company explains that its Pinhole Pro lenses offer a very precise pinhole aperture due to the use of a micro-drill that is robotically controlled. The drill produces a "perfectly round" and smooth hole, says Thingyfy, whereas alternatives like chemical etching and laser etching have downsides, such as corroded or burnt, fuzzy edges.

Thingyfy is funding its new Pinhole Pro S lenses on Kickstarter, where an early bird unit of any camera mount is offered for $59 CAD / $46 USD with an estimated shipping date of April 2018.

I rather like Olympus' solution with their body cap lenses. Not quite apples to apples, but prefer that implementation and construct. Would love FF nikon equivalents, but know it will never happen, too hobbyist for Nikon.

It depends on the meaning behind „pro“. If it means an Artist who uses the Lens in a Creative manner than the lens is pro. If pro means a wedding Or high gloss Magazine photographer than this Lens is Not pro

A "professional" pinhole lens sounds like an oxymoron. Typically, a "professional" lens has a faster autofocus motor, less chromic-abberation, less geometric distortion (pincussion, barrel, etc.), less vignetting, and sharper focus.

Typically, a pinhole lens has zero autofocus, zero chromic-abberation, and zero geometric distortion. You can't decrease the vignetting without de-sharpening the image. Changing the focusing distance also changes the vignetting.

The usual depth of field of a pinhole is expressed as half the focal length to infinity. Most of the comments on this issue demonstrate a lack of knowledge of pinhole photography. It has an interesting history, It's worth looking up.

I too find it amusing that people seek sharpness in pinhole photography lenses. However, having a very clean hole makes the overall image clearer. As I mentioned elsewhere here below, other factors make the image unsharp, such as aperture size and wavelength variation. Not really photography related, but in optical physics hole accuracy is critical, e,g,:

Having compared a bargain pinhole and a medium-high quality pinhole on my Sony Nex, I can tell you from first hand experience that yes, it makes a difference. And while no one does pinhole photography for utmost sharpness, there is a difference between a blurry mess and a softening blur. Large format pinhole looks even better, but that's not what this thread is about.

Re aperture, scroll down towards the bottom where there is a comprehensive chart of pinhole sizes for each lens. E.g. Pinhole Pro S11 hole diameter is 0.14mm. Aperture depends in the focal length, which you can change with extension tubes, so it is up to you to calculate aperture. All the required data is there. I can see at least 15 sample images on the page also.

The ad shows very little about what the lens can do. It doesn't show many sample images and spends more time showing text or the lens itself. I was disappointed. I'm guessing most potential customers already know what the lens can do, just by doing some math.

Mine just came today. Years ago I made a pinhole camera out of a drilled brass sheet and a Quaker oatmeal box spray-painted black inside. Bought some film and paper and some developer and fixer. Took it on vacation and the grandkids went nuts for it. Darkroom was an interior bathroom with a red bulb for safety light. You should have seen them when they saw the image come up. Great fun.

Pinhole FOV and pseudo focal length is determined by the distance from the hole to the detector. It is simple geometry. Note that the hole is set back into the cam body in order to produce a short distance for a large FOV.

If the hole was situated in a sliding tube then you would have a "zoom".

Hello @Sakura Sakura, any engineer knows that drills don't make holes that are very round, especially in metal. That's why precision holes in items like engines are often perfected using taper reamers, or by gradually enlarging the hole with progressively larger size drills. [Have a look at videos on engine machining from Porsche and so on.]

The thing that I would question is that 800x microscope photos I have seen of pinholes for cameras laser cut in brass or other metal are absolutely clean and round, and I always thought that drilling could not achieve that level of accuracy. They claim to use micro-robotic drills that make 'perfectly round' holes, to quote. I wonder what the definition of 'perfectly round' is as opposed to 'round'.

Despite this, it appears to be a really good product, although I must say that I am amused by all the people who are striving for sharpness in pinhole lenses as I always thought the attraction nowadays is the beautiful unsharpness!

The focal length of a pinhole is its distance from the imager plane.So the 11mm version it will be 11mm on MFT - it will not give 120° on MFT!(It will give the same angle of view as a 22mm lens would give on full frame.)

It's a little more complicated than that. The hole is INSIDE the chamber. The hole is BEHIND the cap. You would have to glue several layers of plastic onto the back of a body cap and drill through all of them without breaking the glue.

The first batch of these pinhole "lenses" -- the ones with the different apertures -- were crap. I got one for Fuji X but it was a few months before I had a chance to really test it.

"Dreamy" is one thing, but I could have achieved better results from sticking a cheap clear filter in front of a 35mm (FF) or 23mm (APS-C), smeared it with Vaseline or nose oil, and shooting at f/16 with the lens at hyperfocal. I kept the lens caps and tossed the rest of the "lens" in the trash.

I've seen much better results with 120 film in purpose build pinhole bodies at around half the price of a mid-range Fuji lens.

Hi @Simon Says, Lenses don't have to be made of glass or solid optical material. The defining characteristic of a lens is that it can form an image, not that it is glass, or that it bends light. A pinhole forms an image by the rectilinear propagation of light. That's why some people refer to pinholes as pinhole lenses. Some people prefer to reserve the word lens exclusively for glass optics, but pinhole lens is perfectly valid.

Coming up next is a service to strip everything from the newly purchased latest camera, leaving just the bare sensor, so one could make photograms with it. You know, putting dead spiders onto the sensor and being creative with the silhouettes. 45 MP, pixel shift and all.

Tungsten Nordstein, Typically, a "professional lens" has faster autofocus than a consumer grade lens. this pinhole lens brags about not having any autofocus at all. Typically, a "professional lens" has higher quality "glass" and makes sharper images. This pinhole lens brags about not having anything in the optical path at all. Pinhole lens' are blurry by nature. Typically, a "professional lens" has less chromic-abberation, and geometric distortion. A pinhole has absolutely zero of these by nature.

What is the difference between a professional and non-professional pinhole lens? Is the pro model made of stellite instead of brass?

I get your point, but can I remind everyone that 'professional' means 'for 'professionals' . A professional is someone who does something for a living and by implication needs better quality tools than an amateur.

But even that no longer is the truth. Today we even have 'professional' chewing gum. Gum used by pro sports people. It's called marketing.

To called this an oxymoron is to imply that pros do not do pinhole. Which is simply non-factual.

You can't. They have another product where you can rotate a ring to choose different size apertures. I cant figure out how this works unless the hole is off center, but it is their previous product. It's unclear to me where one can actually buy this device.

steve....And if you don't put a filter on this....The hole is a funnel right to your sensor....We'll have a whole new series....The dust on my sensor from my pinhole lens...:=)Didn't lensbaby give up on this already?

I guess some of you don't know that you can easily check how much dust is on you sensor by taking a picture of an OOF sky, or anything else uniform in tone with a wide lens and the aperture closed to its smallest opening. At f64, or whatever tiny aperture this pinhole has, you'll get to see every speck. I know, I already have a pinhole and see tons of dust when using it, despite the dust reduction system.

Actually cool. If it works. The only way to get sharper pinhole images for a small sensor (e.g. 35 mm FF) is to go wide angle. And - for the mirrorless camera there is no flapping mirror to hit that inverted cone.

So - it is all about if they really can make an 120 degree pinhole. That is not easy. It has to be extremely thin and even at the edges of the hole.

I am kind of tempted by this.

If it does not already exist. There are already precision pinholes to buy. But ... probably not at that angle.

If we assume that the distance from pinhole to sensor is 12 mm, then the optimal pinhole size is approx 0.1 mm. Lets guess that the sharpness on the sensor (at the center) is 0.2 mm. Then the resolution will be 180x120 fuzzy pixels.

@Roland, you are making the only educated postings here, so I put my concern here ...

The kickstarter page has very detailed info at the bottom, and it is overfunded already. The 11mm lens has a 0.14mm hole drilled with a 0.05mm drill creating two 120degree funnels into 1mm thick aluminium.

That creates an F/80 lens.

My concern is that this creates hole blur much greater than diffraction blur, i.e., the lens is less sharp than a pinhole lens could be. The resolution is about 260px wide. The kickstarter page has a video, on the bottom of the page, created entirely from their pinhole lens-> https://vimeo.com/238896867

@falconeyes. They use a drill (that is much bigger than 0.14 mm) with a precision conical front. Then they drill to a certain depth from both sides. Where those cones (funnels) meets there will then be a 0.14 mm hole. And the machine can do it at a rather high speed. Impressive!

There is another way of doing it, that I think is much more common. You use a very thin foil and mount it at the bottom of a funnel in a thicker material. Then you use a laser and drill a round hole in the thin foil.

There are disadvantages with this other method. First - it is not easy to get the hole round. Second - do NOT TOUCH the foil.

Actually, I think their approach is refreshing.

If only digital cameras were larger, it would even have been useful.

Now - I do have an idea to a large format digital pin hole camera. Do you think I shall start a kickstarter funded startup? Or - shall I just build it and surprise the world?

@Roland, @JensR ... pinhole lenses are toy lenses are worth no money.Pinhole lenses are sharpest where the 10-90% edge blur widths from diffraction and the hole become approx. equal. F/80 isn't blurry enough for a 0.14mm hole and this isn't dependent on the image format. Large format allows to create sharp images overall, though.

The only meaningful pinhole camera is a camera obscura with photo paper, e.g., mounted within the trunk of a car. But its all being done already ...

Well, I think people spend more money on worse toys than pinhole lenses ;)

I agree that a camera obscura with photo paper is special, though :)

Roland, several projects (kickstarter, DIY blogs, youtube...) exist for large format pinholery. Some with CAD data you can 3D print. You might have a extra few ideas up your sleeve, but even you might be able to go further if you use the existing projects?

I was thinking of getting inspiration from those mechanical designs and then use a scanning back (just for the oddity, it would be cool, but you'd need to severely modify the scanner to get the required exposure times) or a screen and a secondary digital camera: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3996328

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